55 pages • 1-hour read
Saints and Misfits
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Chapters 18-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary: “Saints”
As Janna prepares to leave for school the next morning, her mom’s new, smaller bed arrives. Her mom ordered it so that Janna’s bed would fit in her room as well. At school, Janna sees Jeremy and avoids him to talk to Soon-Lee, who tells her that she only read the parts of the printed math test that they never learned about in class, blacking out the rest. Soon-Lee also tells Janna that Lauren is Jeremy’s cousin. In history class, some students harass the teacher for being anti-war and anti-violence, but Sandra speaks for the first time in class that year, asking a simple question and dispelling the building tension. At lunch, Tats rambles on about becoming a matchmaker, but when her crush, Matt, passes by without even looking at her, Janna thinks that Tats deserves someone better. In gym class there is a substitute teacher, and Tats convinces Janna to go without her hijab again. Lauren says she knows that Janna likes Jeremy, so she invites both Janna and Tats to a party at her house that weekend. But in gym class when Jeremy enters and Janna waves at him, she notices that Lauren and her friend are smiling and laughing in a mocking way. As Janna jogs past the weight room, she notices that Farooq is also in there with Jeremy.
At home, Janna sees that Muhammad is packing up his things, and after reading one of her dad’s email chains, she decides to acquiesce and move into her mom’s room. She hopes that this act of altruism will help her sort out her life. As she takes Mr. Ram to the community center, they pass by Ms. Kolbinsky and her granddaughter, Sandra. At the community center, Nuah tells her a joke and then shows her a picture of his little brother wearing a kufi. As she sorts through questions on her uncle’s website, she deletes all of them and writes her own two questions in, asking the two most pressing questions in her own life: what to do about loving a non-Muslim, and what to do when a respected person in the community has done something wrong.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Saints and Monsters”
The next morning when Janna wakes up, her brother thanks her for giving up her room. She goes down to spend the morning with Mr. Ram while his son is away. She and Mr. Ram talk about love, and he recites a poem by Rumi and tells her that Rumi believed real love originated in divine love. After he falls asleep, Janna gets a call from Tats who tells her that Lauren has posted a picture on Facebook that shows Janna without her hijab. Janna quickly goes back upstairs while Mr. Ram sleeps and untags herself from the photo. She looks through Lauren’s Facebook page, trying to understand her motivations, until she realizes that she has left Mr. Ram unattended for over an hour. His son is unhappy with her when he finds out and scolds her for being selfish.
Fizz messages Janna asking why there is a haram (forbidden) picture of her circulating online, and Janna sees that Farooq has posted a status about how sad it is that Muslim girls are letting go of their modesty. Janna begins to cry, feeling both ashamed and betrayed by her friend. When she leaves to go to the Quiz Bowl practice with her brother, she runs into Tats and Jeremy, who have come to invite her to the lake. They share an awkward elevator ride together with Janna, who is wearing sunglasses to hide the fact that she has been crying. She agrees to go to the lake with Jeremy after she returns from the Quiz Bowl but asks to invite others since she feels awkward about going alone. However, Jeremy’s easy acceptance of this request makes Janna feel better, and she is happy about the upcoming date. Sarah’s parents are icy and insist that Sarah will stay with their relatives in Chicago rather than with Muhammad’s father. As the two girls practice for the Quiz Bowl, Janna notices that Farooq is sitting on a bean bag chair in the corner.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Monster, Saints, and Misfits”
Farooq drives one of the vehicles to the Quiz Bowl, and Janna realizes with horror that she must ride with him. She stays silent for the entire trip. At the Quiz Bowl, their team does well, and Janna and Nuah bond some more as they celebrate their teams’ victories. Each team member is assigned a category, with Janna taking Seerah: the study of the life of the prophet Muhammad. However, when it is her turn, she is so flustered by Farooq’s presence in the audience that she is unable to buzz in and answer any of the questions. As a result, their team is disqualified. Afterwards, Muhammad asks her to serve as chaperone at a dinner with him and Sarah, and she cries on the walk over to the restaurant, knowing that she had the answers to the quiz questions but was unable to respond because of Farooq. Later, as they leave the restaurant, the three of them run into two individuals, a man and woman, who greet Sarah as old friends. The girl asks Sarah when she started wearing the hijab, which is surprising to Janna, and the man looks at Sarah with a strange expression. Sarah tells them that Muhammad is her fiancée. Janna ascertains that the man, Malcolm, and Sarah must have a past history.
At their dad’s, Janna hugs her little stepbrother while Muhammad introduces Sarah. When Janna goes down to the basement to wash up, she is cornered by Farooq, who was waiting for her. Farooq bars her from leaving and asks why she is avoiding him, accusing her of wanting him and claiming that Jeremy is just playing on her emotions. They are interrupted by Nuah, and Janna runs away and barricades herself in a room with Sausun, a girl on the Quiz Bowl team who wears a niqab. While Janna tries to control her crying, Sausun gives her candy and shows her YouTube videos of two girls called the Niqabi Ninjas. Janna slowly begins to tell her about Farooq and everything that happened. Sausun implies that Janna should take an active role in doing something about Farooq. She offers to trade places with Janna on the ride home tomorrow, and Janna feels immense gratitude for this gesture.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Misfits”
The next morning, Janna waits until the other car leaves before going upstairs. She finds her dad, Muhammad, and Nuah watching old home videos of her and Muhammad before the divorce. But when she finds out that Farooq also saw the videos, she feels uncomfortable. Nuah follows her outside and asks her if she’s upset because they lost the Quiz Bowl. When they arrive back at the mosque, Nuah texts her and asks her if Farooq has been bothering her, but Janna insults him and tells him to leave her alone.
She realizes with horror that her mom has seen the notebook in which she noted her upcoming date with Jeremy. To hide her true intentions and gain permission to leave the house, she lies and says she’s going to spend the afternoon with Fizz at the mosque. At the lake, Jeremy shows her how to feed chickadees and makes a heart with the birdseed. They go to his house to eat, but when Janna realizes that Farooq is there, she decides to leave to go to Fizz’s house instead. She falls asleep in a hammock in Fizz’s backyard, and when she wakes up, her mom is there, angry, having searched for her at the mosque. That evening Fizz calls her and asks why she’s kept everything from her, revealing that Farooq sent her a video of Janna and Jeremy by the lake. Janna gets angry and tells her that Farooq is a disgusting creep, and when she tries to continue, Fizz hangs up on her. Later, she finds out that Farooq sent the same video to Muhammad.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Monsters”
At school, Janna confronts Lauren about posting the picture of her on Facebook and asks her not to do it again. She then goes to the library to study with Soon-Lee, and shows her a video of the Niqabi Ninjas. The video shows a girl in a niqab ranting about people who cry about injustices without acting to stop them and uses specific details from the Chicago trip. Janna realizes that Sausun produced the video and is referencing the information Janna told her in confidence. Back at home, Janna calls Sausun, who claims that no one will know her video was a reference to Janna. Janna claims that now Sausun owes her and proposes that they catch Farooq on video to expose him to the world. Sausun only agrees to do it if Janna wears a niqab and joins her, but Janna insists that she can’t be in the video. Sausun reveals that Farooq distributed the video of her with Jeremy to everyone on the quiz team and argues that she’s already been exposed. Sausun ultimately takes down the Niqabi Ninja video but insists that Janna deal with her problem on her own.
At home Janna receives a call from Sarah who asks her if she’s in any trouble. When Janna halfheartedly affirms that she is, Sarah insists that they meet up for cupcakes, promising that she will reveal the details about her past with Malcolm if Janna comes. At the cupcake shop, Sarah reveals that she dated Malcolm for two years, but they grew apart when Sarah began to devote more of her time to social justice causes. She also reveals that she was the one who got her entire family into Islam, challenging some of Janna’s preconceptions about her. On the drive home, Muhammad asks her why she won’t tell him about the video that Farooq is circulating. They argue about their parents again; Janna blames their mom for leaving their dad, but Muhammad tells her it’s more complicated than that. Tats interrupts their conversation with a phone call, reminding Janna that she wants to go to Lauren’s party that Friday.
Chapters 18-22 Analysis
In this section Janna’s life becomes even more complicated when she begins to deal with bullying and microaggressions from Lauren, and these difficulties illustrate the darker aspects of Understanding People’s True Motivations. While Lauren initially pretends to befriend Janna, her cruel actions soon prove that her motivations are not sincere; she posts pictures of Janna without her consent, laughs at Janna and Tats behind their backs, and manipulates them in various ways. Soon-Lee refers to Lauren and girls like her as “flaky”, clarifying this term by saying, “I don’t mean flaky as in not smart…I mean soulless” (249). This assessment reflects the ways in which Lauren’s popular and fashionable outward appearance does not match her inner “kernel” and shows that her lack of self-awareness and actively cruel behavior have turned her into an unethical person who takes pleasure in causing harm to others.
In addition to these social difficulties at school, Janna continues to struggle with issues surrounding the theme of Safety and Peril within Religious Communities. When Fizz discovers the photo of Janna without a hijab, she sides with her cousin Farooq and his hypocritical and judgmental online comments about Janna. Rather than being open to Understanding People’s True Motivations, Fizz is unable to look deeper than the surface of her friend’s religious practices and therefore judges Janna purely on the basis of her outward actions without considering her inner motivations. On the other hand, Janna herself also comes to learn that “Saint Sarah” is more nuanced and complicated than she realized; far from being a longtime follower of Islam, she has only recently converted and begun wearing the hijab. Thus, even in the midst of suffering for other people’s judgments, Janna is unwittingly making her own, and this revelation reflects need of all the characters to take a step back and reassess their own social situation from the perspective of others to gain greater awareness.
Because of the secret she carries, Janna becomes increasingly isolated from those around her. The direct result of her assault is a sense of silence and shame. This aspect of her trauma manifests during the regional Islamic Quiz Bowl when she literally loses her voice in the presence of Farooq; the incident also creates a metaphor for the larger issue of her silence around the assault itself. However, despite her continuing silence to almost everyone on the topic, Janna does begin to find new ways to voice her inner turmoil and seek advice on the right course of action to take. Eventually she brings this deep-seated question anonymously to Uncle Amu, writing the following in an attempt to find answers:
“Dear Imam, what if you know something bad that someone’s done, something against the laws of God, but no one else knows it, and people think that that person is really good and should get a position of responsibility in the community, like, say, leading prayers…what should the person who knows the truth do?” (161)
By finding the courage to ask the question, she takes the first step toward regaining her agency, further developing the theme of Reclaiming One’s Voice after Sexual Assault.
A major character development for Janna occurs when she decides to give up her room to her brother Muhammad. Although she initially feels that doing so will lead to having even less control and personal space in her life, she eventually decides to give up her room as a way to initiate a positive change against the many struggles, both internal and external, that she continues to face. In connection with this decision, she therefore wonders, “Is it wrong to make a deal with God? I’ll reorganize myself in the apartment if you reorganize my life?” (155), and this thought demonstrates the intense degree to which the protagonist’s faith influences even the aspects of her daily life and shows how she understands the connection between the physical and spiritual. Her decision to give up her room therefore demonstrates that despite her distance with her family, she still recognizes their importance and is willing to make sacrifices for them out of care and loyalty. It also shows that Janna is a dynamic character who is capable of change and development, a trait that will later aid her in overcoming her the burden of her secret.
Through the Islamic Quiz Bowl, Janna becomes better acquainted with Sausun, a girl who wears a niqab. Janna admires the confidence that Sausun has in choosing to wear the niqab, and when she initially sees it, she thinks of the garment as being deeply empowering. In Janna’s eyes, Sausun comes to embody the ability to practice complete self-acceptance and resilience in the face of society’s criticism, for Sausun’s practice of recording YouTube videos to increase awareness and acceptance of girls who wear the niqab demonstrates both her inner strength and her dedication to social activism. By contrast, Janna grapples with her own emotions and experiences and struggles to find strength within herself to face the challenges and betrayals she encounters. Thus, the girls serve as foils for one another, and Janna finds herself opening up to Sausun, who advises her to take action and reclaim control over her life.
While Janna still isn’t ready to confront Farooq herself, her courage to confront random bullies at school and her determination to confront Lauren over the Facebook photos both show that she has gained greater agency in her own life and is now more willing to speak out than she was at the beginning of the novel. While her newfound “voice” is sometimes misdirected (such as her insults to the well-intentioned Nuah), and she still struggles with keeping secrets (such as lying to her mom), ultimately this section of the novel shows Janna gaining a stronger voice and beginning to move toward a more liberated existence that will ultimately allow her to reclaim her autonomy.
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